Monday, May 17, 2004

Antonia Zerbisias has waked the ire of Glenn Reynolds by claiming (amid a stream of other incoherences) that "the warblog drums are growing silent". The title of her piece in the Toronto Star is "Insult-happy Web guns fall quiet", which illustrates her own illiteracy in addition to a poor grasp of the facts. Things "fall silent" or "grow quiet", not the other way around. [Correction: Evidently the headline was written by her editor, not Zerbisias herself.] But I digress...

She ends her piece with a quote from blogger Marc Weisblott:

"There seems to be warblogger fatigue setting in," says popcult blogeratus Marc Weisblott (http://www.radioweisblogg.blogspot.com) who has been tracking the phenomenon. "I think this Iraq debacle is exasperating all of 'em.

"And when your whole schtick is rage against (the New York Times') Maureen Dowd or (the Globe and Mail's) Heather Mallick ... or, uh, you, that's only going to carry one so far."

Not that I want to be picky or anything, but how exactly did he come to that conclusion? As a quick trip to the blogs she conveniently links will indicate, the bloggers in question all posted specific reasons for their slowdown in posting which had nothing to do with her fantasy of disenchantment with the war effort.

Why do I care what a second-rate Canadian "journalist" has to say? Well, I don't really, I just wanted to point out the reason that two new blogs have been added to my blogroll: Kathy Shaidle's ReLapsed Catholic, and Damien Penny's Daimnation, neither of which I would have heard of if not for Zerbisias' screed.

UPDATE: I have changed the links to point to the responses to Zerbisias, rather than to the blogs themselves. Seems only fair.

UPDATE: Zerbisias responds via email:

Just for the Record?It's a headline, not a ''title'' -- and columnists don't write them. Editors do.
Thought you should know since you claim to promote literacy.
Carry on.

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